The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 6, July 1902 - April, 1903 Page: 147
401 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The African Slave Tiade in Texas.
him. And it was not until the aid of the United States was invoked
and Commodore Patterson was sent against him in the summer of
1814 with a little fleet of gunboats that the bandits were dispersed.'
Some of the largest merchants of Louisiana were Lafitte's factors,
and his goods were handled almost openly in the streets of New
Orleans.2
When Lafitte resumed at Galveston, therefore, in 1817, the in-
dustry which the United States had interrupted in 1814 and the
British investment of New Orleans had entirely crushed in 1815,
his old commercial affiliations were revived, and his intimate
knowledge of the bays and bayous of the Louisiana coast enabled
him to defy the custom officers. Taking the cue from his prede-
cessor, however, he thought it prudent to fortify his establishment
with at least the semblance of legitimacy; wherefore the island was
again declared a republican province, a full corps of officers was
elected, and allegiance vowed to Mexico. Not deterred by the trifl-
ing circumstance that no qualified representative of that govern-
ment was present to administer the oath, citizen Luis Iturribarria
swore Governor Louis Derieux, and the rest of the cabinet then took
the oath to the governor." A frank avowal of their purpose subse-
quently made by John Ducoing, their judge of admiralty, was that
of "capturing Spanish property under what they called the Mexi-
can flag, but without any idea of aiding the revolution in Mexico,
or that of any of the revolted Spanish colonies."4
Probably Lafitte took the trouble to procure letters of marque
against Spain from one of the infantine Latin republics-possibly
from two or three of them-but this, like his government at Gal-
veston, was the merest formality, and practically it mattered little
to him and his desperate followers whether the vessels they cap-
tured were Spanish or not, so 'their cargoes were heavy and their
guns light. As with De Aury, the bulk of his prizes were inter-
cepted off the West Indies, and a fair proportion of them being
slavers, Galveston Island would quickly have assumed in population
the appearance of a miniature Guinea coast, had not the buccaneers
1Barb-Marbois, Histoire de la Louisiane, 414.
'De Bow's Review, July, 1851.
8Yoakum, History of Tewas, I 453.
4Ibid., 455.147
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 6, July 1902 - April, 1903, periodical, 1903; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101028/m1/151/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.